-0.67(-3.70%)

0.0000(-0.0000%)

Generally speaking long term investing is the way to go. But unfortunately, some companies simply don't succeed. To wit, the Liquidity Services, Inc. (NASDAQ:LQDT) share price managed to fall 62% over five long years. That's not a lot of fun for true believers. The falls have accelerated recently, with the share price down 24% in the last three months.

Liquidity Services isn't currently profitable, so most analysts would look to revenue growth to get an idea of how fast the underlying business is growing. When a company doesn't make profits, we'd generally expect to see good revenue growth. As you can imagine, fast revenue growth, when maintained, often leads to fast profit growth.

In the last five years Liquidity Services saw its revenue shrink by 18% per year. That's definitely a weaker result than most pre-profit companies report. Arguably, the market has responded appropriately to this business performance by sending the share price down 18% (annualized) in the same time period. It's fair to say most investors don't like to invest in loss making companies with falling revenue. You'd want to research this company pretty thoroughly before buying, it looks a bit too risky for us.

The chart below shows how revenue and earnings have changed with time, (if you click on the chart you can see the actual values).

A Different Perspective

Liquidity Services shareholders are up 2.9% for the year. Unfortunately this falls short of the market return. But at least that's still a gain! Over five years the TSR has been a reduction of 18% per year, over five years. So this might be a sign the business has turned its fortunes around. If you would like to research Liquidity Services in more detail then you might want to take a look at whether insiders have been buying or selling shares in the company.

Please note, the market returns quoted in this article reflect the market weighted average returns of stocks that currently trade on US exchanges.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.